Harold Corwin

IC 4802 is a part of NGC 6717. Bigourdan found and measured it on the same night that he measured NGC 6717. His position is accurate and agrees to within a few arcsec of the GSC position. This pins the object as a clump of stars about 15 arcsec northeast of the center of NGC 6717. It is pretty easily seen on the ESO IIIa-F film, and is even more clear in the Digitized Sky Survey image of the cluster.

Some have suggested that IC 4802 is identical to NGC 6717. However, the fact that Bigourdan used NGC 6717 as his comparison "star" for IC 4802, nails the coffin lid tightly shut on that hypothesis. Similarly, ESO's identification of IC 4802 with a star 2.0 arcmin northeast NGC 6717 is also wrong.

― IC Notes by Harold Corwin

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